The Battle of the Water Futures

TL;DR

The paper introduces a new water distribution system design competition emphasizing staged planning, deep uncertainties, and AI, aiming to advance urban water system resilience and policymaking.

Contribution

It presents a novel staged-design challenge incorporating unobservable uncertainties and AI, with an open-source evaluation framework for water system planning.

Findings

First staged-design water challenge with deep uncertainty modeling

Integration of policymaking and AI in water system design

Open-source framework for transparent evaluation

Abstract

The highly anticipated 'Battle of the Water Networks' is back with a new challenge for the water community. This competition will be hosted at the 4th International Joint Conference on Water Distribution Systems Analysis and Computing and Control in the Water Industry (WDSA/CCWI 2026), taking place in Paphos, Cyprus, from May 18-21, 2026. This competition embodies the core mission of Water-Futures and the theme for WDSA/CCWI 2026: "Designing the next generation of urban water (and wastewater) systems." The objective is to design and operate a water distribution system over a long-term horizon under deep uncertainty, with interventions applied in stages. For the first time, this challenge features a staged-design approach, unobservable and unknown uncertainties, and incorporates elements of policymaking and artificial intelligence. The solutions will be assessed using a transparent and inspectable open-source evaluation framework.